Readers' comments

Several years ago a bunch of startups were doing the rounds of the European operators trying to pitch services that would have mitigated a lot of these outcomes (including us).

The operators were generally either unable to see the potential threat to their revenues or treated the startups like sh*t....or both. Very few of the startups still exist and most of the entrepreneurs - if they're still in the business - will be building services that gut the operators rather than help them.

The operators have little reason to blame anyone but themselves. Sad, but true.

I started a blog predicting this in 2003. It has come to pass. I now run Future of Voice and Telco-OTT Services workshops together with fellow analyst Dean Bubley.

Telcos need to get into the game of offering their own OTT services that go off-net; they also need to work with the OTT providers to give OTT services access to network capabilities to make them work better. There is plenty of room for everyone. Telcos just need to focus on their fundamentals, which is helping to deliver reliable services that just work, regardless of who built the services.

I think that the article may be over stating the adverse consequences of the technology to mobile operators. Most smart phones will automatically use an available Wi-Fi connection that the user has previously joined rather than the cellular data network. Users get a faster connection over Wi-Fi and a better signal in buildings than they get from the cell tower. A mobile operator can charge for the service while shunting the load to the internet provider.

I would be interested to find out what percentage of cell data access, calling minutes and text messages go through Wi-Fi rather than via the airwaves to a cell tower. The answer might be favorable to a mobile service provider but a concern to an internet service provider.

But don't be so harsh on operators- they have made significant investments in the networks that enable the great data and application services we all enjoy, only to be exploited by third parties who undermine the very networks upon which they rely

I think it's too late for Joyn. We are in a point that we want to communicate through every device we are currently using (phone, tablet, pc, TV or else (?)). Apple would be a fool to agree to Joyn's plan since it's the pioneer who got us in this point. (Thank you!)
Soon we will only need a data plan and that's an option that the mobile operators have to start to explore.
(via http://tech.christiansino.com/over-the-top-phone-services-joyn-them-or-join)

I've written about this a couple of times myself.
There's a longer list of mobile companies rolling out VoIP OTT services of their own: http://bloggeek.me/telco-ott/
The problem is that this list is still too short and they are moving a bit slowly. Since shifting from their current voice and SMS technologies to VoIP based ones is a huge step, I am afraid they won't have enough time to accommodate for this change if they don't start right now.